Mukhtiar Panghali has lost an appeal of his second degree murder conviction in the 2006 death of his wife. Panghali made an emotional public plea for help to find the missing woman during a 2006 press conference at the Surrey RCMP detachment. The charred remains of Manjit Panghali, who was four months pregnant, were found several days later along the DeltaPort Causeway.

METRO VANCOUVER - A former Surrey teacher who murdered his pregnant wife and then burned her body has lost an appeal of his conviction.

Mukhtiar Panghali had urged the B.C. Court of Appeal to overturn his conviction for second-degree murder on the grounds the evidence didn't support the verdict.

But a three-person panel of B.C.'s highest court dismissed the appeal in a ruling released Tuesday.

Panghali was sentenced last year to a minimum of 15 years behind bars for strangling his wife Manjit in October 2006.

Manjit, also a teacher, was four months pregnant with their second child and had just returned to their Cloverdale home from a prenatal yoga class when her husband killed her and then disposed of her body on a rocky Delta beach.

Panghali then waited 26 hours before calling police to report his wife was missing. He later wept at an RCMP news conference where he begged for information about her disappearance.

Her body was found four days later.

Panghali argued in his appeal submissions that there was no proof he intended to kill his wife and therefore a manslaughter verdict would have been more appropriate. Burning his wife's body did not indicate he meant for her to die, he said.

Appeal Court Justice S. David Frankel rejected Panghali's arguments. The force used to strangle Manjit was consistent with a murder verdict, he added.

"Mr. Panghali's submission fails to have regard to the totality of the evidence regarding the mechanism of death," Frankel said.

"In this case, not only was pressure applied past the point at which Ms. Panghali became unconscious, but it was applied with considerable force, as evinced by the fractured hyoid bone."

Frankel also said "the effort to destroy that evidence supports the trial judge's conclusion that Ms. Panghali's death was not accidental."

He said Manjit's death was clearly "caused by the intentional application of force that Mr. Panghali knew was likely to cause death and in respect of which he was reckless about whether death would result."

Justices Harvey Groberman and David C. Harris agreed with Frankel's written reasons.

Panghali was charged in January 2007 after police found gas station video footage showing him buying a cigarette lighter and a newspaper on the night his wife went missing. He had earlier claimed to investigators that he hadn't left the house. When he was arrested, he was in possession of his wife's cellphone, which she had with her at the time of her death.

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